Simply Us

Our Entryway

2011-12-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

I wanted to share with you what we did for the section of wall between the door and the stairs. I had this portrait that we had taken last year by Rachel Clare made into a canvas from Costco.

I was very impressed with the quality of the canvas and how it turned out. Of course, it also helps to start out with a great picture! I wanted to incorporate the same color that I painted the kitchen wall so I painted this 4'x5' rectangle on the wall and then my wonderful husband added white trim around the edges. Very easy and it adds so much to this wall where as just the canvas would have looked plain and small on this big wall.

Overall, I am really happy with it and I'm thinking of doing something fun here for the holidays but we'll see if I get around to that this year! I have more plans for the area to the right of this, a mudroom! I am desperate for a place for the kids' shoes (I include my husband in this!) plus jackets, backpacks and all of that other stuff. But I have to take it one project at a time right?
Right now we are actually in Lake Tahoe with some great friends so hopefully next week I will have some pictures to share from our trip!

Class Pictures

2011-12-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

I was blessed with the opportunity to come in to the boys' preschool class and take school pictures. We turned it into a fundraiser for the class and overall it went very well considering I had 23 kids to shoot!

Of course, the two kids that gave me problems were my own, but I think that is because they are so tired of me taking their picture all the time! Zachary was pretty good although that face in the picture above is pretty funny!

These are the kinds of pictures that Gabriel was giving me...

A face only a mother could love, right?

Zachary was pretty cute although then he started laughing and I got...

this one and...

this one, the little funny boy!

I do love this face though, classic Zach complete with sweater that he continually tells me has a rumbus on it, they are learning a lot in preschool!

I had each kid start off with a picture of them holding this chalkboard sign that we wrote their name on with the year. It is not only great for the parents to have the child's name and the year on it but then it also helped me when editing and copying the pictures to know who was who! I just got to do the other preschool class' pictures so maybe my friend will let me share a few of her son when I get them edited!

I'm BACK!!!

2011-12-07T12:19:00.001-08:00

Okay, so I know that I have been MIA for a long time now. I have had several really tough months and the thought of opening up my heart on here has been too much to handle. But I am ready to celebrate the holidays and then start the new year fresh, but more on that another day! For now, let's just pretend like I was never gone... ok?

Ever since I took that online Photography Class by Maggie Holmes my photography skills have improved so much and I have now officially gone professional! It's a scary thought for me but when I am behind a camera I feel at home and there is something about watching people through a lens that makes my heart sing. So let me share with you some of the photos that I have taken over the last six months and kind of fill you in on what has been happening in our lives...

This is once again that gorgeous couple that I have had the opportunity to shoot several times. We have this plan to take photos every 3 months for their first year but November got too crazy for everyone... boo! I still want to take some and just pretend that it is November.

We shot these out in Barstow at the Harvey House. This building has beautiful architecture and was a lot of fun to wander around and find new places to shoot.

Sometimes you don't even need to see faces to feel the emotion, and that is something that I love to capture!

As we walked down this little walkway I saw this arrow painted on the pillar and instantly had the idea for this picture, it is so perfect!
Next we jump to Halloween and my adorable children, I know I'm biased, but they are pretty cute!

Zachary was Bumblebee from Transformers and they were obsessed with their costumes for weeks wanting to wear them, I have learned my lesson, next year I will not buy them so early because they don't understand.

I love this one of them walking away holding hands. It is not very often that I get to capture the connection between these two. Usually the only connection that I see is one on top of the other while they wrestle.

And here is my Optimus Prime. Every year I find it funny that Gabriel picks the lead character and Zachary always picks the sidekick or secondary character, when in real life normally Zachary is the dominant one.

Kaley was Hermione and she loved having the robe and tie which came in handy when the final movie came out on Blu ray and we were able to dress up to watch it.

Madison was my beautiful Cleopatra and I had so much fun doing her hair and makeup for this.

We went to the pumpkin patch with the playgroup that I have been taking the boys to and we had a great time. I took each of the kids over to the pumpkin field and shot some pictures of them. They were surprisingly very cooperative.

Kaley was pretty cute as usual.

Madison picked out the perfect shirt since it matched the tree almost exactly!

And my Gabriel always has so much personality!

Madison turned 9 in October and Kaley turned 7 in November. I have never really done a big birthday party for them and their friends so this year we decided to do one big party for both of them since they share quite a few friends. I will share more on the party another day, but I these are the photos that I took and printed to sit on the mantle above where they sat to open presents.
Well, I guess for now that is it although I have so much more to share, I promise that I won't be gone for long!

Keep Moving Forward

2011-06-09T09:02:00.000-07:00

Let me first start off this post by saying that I'm not sure that I can make it through creating this post, the tears might just make it near impossible to type, next let me explain that my husband is a Youth Pastor. He has been for over 10 years now and he knows that there is nothing else that he could be doing with his life that could make him happier. I have always helped him when I can and my level of involvement has gone up and down with the craziness of our life. We have gotten to know students really well over the years and have had the opportunity to watch them grow from awkward, immature junior highers to adults graduating from college and starting families. We feel blessed to have had even a small part in their lives.

With that said let me tell you the part that sucks about youth ministry. It is an ever changing life and this is the time of year that things really start to change. We have a new group of seventh graders coming in and it is always funny to watch them squirm the first time that they are expected to sit for a Sunday morning youth service. There is a new group of High School freshman coming in which means a few new students in small groups and their first time at our summer conference (it's always fun to see their reaction to the summer conference that we go to because they never expect the magnitude of impact that it can have, this also creates a different group dynamic every year), and there are High School seniors that we get to celebrate all that they have accomplished and help prepare them for what is to come. And every few years I find a couple of students that I really spend time with and become close to and this is when it gets difficult for us.

This may be the hardest year yet... you may have seen me post pictures of these two before but here is a recap of the last year. I was blessed to be asked by Gabrielle Palayes to shoot her senior pictures, here is one of my favorites...
She is an absolute sweetheart and one of those girls that you can't help but want to hang out with. We had a blast the day that we went out and shot these pictures and I only wish that I knew all of the photography skills that I know now back then!

And then a couple of months ago they asked me to do a best friend's graduating shoot which just happened to coincide with my photography class so they got to be my guinea pigs for an afternoon.
This turned out to be one of our favorites and what you can't tell is that one is wearing an Edward shirt and the other is wearing a Jacob shirt!

Clarissa also asked me to take pictures of her and her boyfriend for their Senior Prom. We went into her beautiful backyard and took some sweet pictures of them.
These two are so adorable together that it makes you sick! lol Clarissa is so gorgeous inside and out it's no wonder she was a princess.

And now these two, that have been best friends since they were kids, have both graduated from High School in the past week. Here is one of my favorite photos that we got...
This picture just says so much about how far they have come together and I know that they will go so far in life and always have each other to lean on. They also know that they will always have me! They have also declared that I am their lifetime photographer (name the time and place and I will be there!).

This is where my heart is torn: one half is so proud of them for all that they have done, who they have become, and excited to see what more they can do in life; and the other half is sad that they will no longer be here on Thursday nights for small group, CIY just won't be the same without them, and the youth room will seem a little less bright without their smiling faces there. Just keep typing, just keep typing... This is our job in ministry, to help these kids navigate jr. high and high school while building a relationship with Jesus and each other so that they can go into the world and make a difference. And I have been so blessed to have been a part of these two girls' lives for the last couple of years, and I know that they are not going far, but now the relationship shifts. No longer are they students and I am one of their youth leaders, now they will be members of the church and I am a friend that is here whenever they need me (thank you Lord for facebook and texting!), and hopefully I will get to still sing on the praise band with them once in a while! This is when we have to keep moving forward, appreciating the past and the moments that we have shared, relying on the grace of God in the present, and trusting in Him for all that the future will hold and the new relationships that will occur.
I love you girls so much! Congratulations on graduating and surviving High School, may God Bless you in all that you do and thank you from the bottom of my heart for letting me be a part of your life. He could not have given me two more incredible people to help heal me and give me the confidence to once again do what God intended us for.

Including the Art

2011-06-08T10:13:00.000-07:00

As a mom I am really bad about keeping all of the little "treasures" that my daughters make me. I do have a box that the girls know to put all of their school stuff in that fills their backpacks and twice a school year I go through it and pick out a selection of artwork and schoolwork that is a good representation of what and how they are doing in school. I then put that stuff into a file folder labeled with the grade in my filing cabinet. At the end of the year I go back through the folder and see if I can take anything out. I would love to start incorporating more of that stuff into the girls' albums but baby steps!

I have recently kept a small box in my scraproom that is for all of the little notes and cards and drawings that the girls make me, and I finally had a chance to sit down and scrap some of the ones from Madison.
I used the SEI Corrine line and I really love the cheeriness of it. I used a slightly older random picture of Madison that I had in my box that just didn't have a place so it was perfect for this. And I think that the crocheted hat adds to the artist flair!
Madison will write me an "I'm sorry" note when she gets in trouble. I love this sweet side of her that is crushed when she knows that she has disappointed us. I have saved this one in particular and that little square drawing is so cute. At her old school, her teacher asked the class to draw a picture representing their favorite day of the week. Madison drew a picture of herself playing football because Sundays are football days (at least for the good part of the year!) We are big Cowboys fans here so football days are very important!
I used this super cute trim at the bottom of the page to give it some color and texture. The top of the journaling I made with an EK Success border punch that looks like notebook paper ripped out.
Here is the inside of the anniversary card that she made us last year. It is so cute and detailed!
This is the cool part about the We R Memory Keepers 3 ring albums. I was able to take a regular 8 1/2 x 11 page protector and place some of Madison's larger artwork right into her album next to the page that I did. I don't need a second album and I didn't have to find a way to incorporate these larger pieces into a 12x12 page! Here is the other side...
This is the flag that Madison created for the kids' "camp-out" in the living room. The scrapbook page is right there behind it.
For right now this is Madison's album, you can find this one here although I have this one coming to me tomorrow in Strawberry to be her next album. I either order from Amazon and use my swagbucks or I order from Ritz Camera.com these are the two best places to get these albums at great prices.

I am hoping to create several more layouts to fit into this album and maybe even be able to fit up to this next birthday but I'm not quite sure yet so I already have the back up album for her in the brighter color. They didn't have that Strawberry a couple of years ago when I bought this pink.
Each album comes with 10 regular 12x12 page protectors in it and one of these divided 4x6 ones. I am planning to put any extra photos of her that didn't get scrapped into these pockets so that they are all together. At the bottom right there you can see that they also have a variety of configurations of divided protectors. I bought the assortment pack but haven't really played with them yet, I will be this summer though!

Thanks for looking at my daughter's album and hopefully it has inspired you to keep and use some of your kids' artwork in your albums!

One Sketch, Four Ways Part 4

2011-06-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

Here is the last installment of my One Sketch, Four Ways week. I'm thinking that by now I don't have to show you the sketch again, (if you do need to see it then scroll down!) This really has been a great way for me to get four Halloween layouts done super quickly so that I can move on and continue to get caught up... I'm about to edit December! Lol My last layout is of my sweet oldest daughter who in my opinion made the perfect Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.
For this layout I flipped the sketch all different ways to fit the pictures that I had but you can still tell that the basic components are there. I love how the title came out with the different letters. And I definitely used the circles again...
Since Madison was Dorothy, and I used the word rainbow in my title, I grabbed a non-Halloween embellishment that went perfectly and ended up tying in quite nicely...
The rainbow is from Sassafrass and the pumpkin is from AC. I also used some more of those little shapes that I cut out from the AC paper and put rubons on them from Scenic Route to show the date.

All in all, I think that these layouts came out pretty well and you won't even be able to tell that they all came from the same sketch because they all go into different albums! I love it! Hope you all have a great weekend!

One Sketch Four Ways Part 3

2011-06-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

I'm back again with another layout that I did using this sketch from Creating Keepsakes October 2010 issue...
For this layout I took the basic components and flipped them upside down. It was about this time that I ran out of white cardstock so I had to step outside my comfort zone and used black as my base. I guess that because my photos have always been so dark that I tend to rely on white cardstock to brighten them up. Like how I matted these photos in white. Now I won't have to worry so much about that since I know how to get bright, perfectly exposed photos from my camera and now I can start using more color! Yay!
I used this striped AC paper to bring lots of color to the pages and I also used two of the AC journaling cards, the blue one and the base for the Halloween Night rub on. I cut part of it off so that it looks like it runs off the page here...

And then I used the rest of it on the other page here...
and put the date there. I cut more circles out and scattered those around along with more of those hand cut little shapes. I love the AC buttons that match perfectly and had to add some of those for dimension. Glue dots work great for this.

One more layout to go! I am also working on something (well my husband is working on something for me) that I think will change the way that you approach big scrapping projects! Can't wait to share it!

One Sketch Four Ways Part 2

2011-06-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

Here is part two of the series where I show you how I took one sketch and created four different layouts to get things done faster! This is the layout that I did for Gabriel (a.k.a. Batman), you can see that I took this sketch...
and I flipped it backwards! And using different papers plus not matting the outside, it looks very different from the first one. And this is what I love about sketches, if you find one that you like... re use it!

I used mostly all the Boo! collection from American Crafts although I did try to really use up the rub ons from Scenic Route that I picked up last year. The orange decorative border is from American Crafts and I like it a lot but I had to really glue it down to get it to stop lifting off the paper. The journaling spot is also from AC and I love these things! This time I did incorporate the circles from the sketch, sometimes I just love circles!
One of my most favorite tools is my Sizzix Big Shot and the Tim Holtz die that I used here. I use this thing on everything from pages to cards to gifts! It is just so versatile and can be used on thicker materials too. I also tried to use up some old embellishments that I had in my Halloween box like this Happy Halloween title from MAMBI...
I love to mat one photo to make it the center of attention and this one of Gabriel as Batman is priceless to me.
Hope you enjoyed once again! Come back tomorrow for Part 3!

One Sketch, 4 Ways

2011-05-31T08:00:00.000-07:00

I have told you before that I love to work from sketches. Some days my creative mind starts out on a roll and I can sit down and know exactly what I want to create. I can see it and and it all just flows out. But then there are some days that I sit at my desk and stare at pictures and cardstock and I sit, and nothing comes to mind. These are the days that sketches work well. They jump start my creativity and allow me to add my own touches without having to start from scratch. Well, this sketch is from the October 2010 Creating Keepsakes issue...
It is a pretty basic sketch that had all of the components that I needed and about the right amount of pictures that I had for each child. Because I have four children and I want each of them to have a complete record of their childhood (and I have so much product!) that I try to create a layout for each child's album for events such as Halloween. But when you consider 4 two-page layouts plus layouts for pumpkin carving, pumpkin patch photos, Halloween parties and other special fall related events, I start to get a little sick of Halloween stuff. So I try to simplify things when I can. This is one way that I did that, I took one sketch and adapted it to create four different layouts. Here is the first one...
I started off sticking to the sketch very closely. I had the right number and orientation of pictures for Zachary's page and then I started to build my page.
This library card is something that I created with my silhouette a long time ago and never put to use. It is a print and cut and it worked out perfectly for my journaling. I cut out little pieces of one of the American Crafts Boo papers to add all over the pages.
The Boo rub on is from Scenic Route and the chipboard frame I believe is from Fancy Pants and I found it in my stash. I painted it with the new Jenni Bowlin paint dabber in Chicken Feed that I picked up at the Del Mar Scrapbook Expo. (I have to get more of these!) I also inked the edges with black ink. The little Remember This stamp is from 7gypsies.

Come back tomorrow for the layout #2!

The Girls' Room Redo

2011-05-30T10:23:00.001-07:00

My daughters are now 8 and 6 (although my oldest keeps reminding me that she will turn 10 next year, 2012) and as I kept getting mad at them for not keeping their room clean it dawned on me that I had not given them the tools to be able to keep it clean. So it was up to me to help them. Their room used to have just a couple of sterilite drawer units with their toys in it and then everything else ended up everywhere. Most days I wasn't sure that they had a floor!

Friends of ours have been keeping a desk in their storage unit for us for over a year now and I finally was able to get over there and get it. It belonged to their daughter that is grown up and I knew right away that it would be something that the girls would be able to grow into. Here is what it looked like before (taken with my iphone before we went to go buy paint)...
I actually loved the blue but it just didn't go with the girls' room. The fake keyhole was my favorite part and that drawer folds down for a keyboard someday when they are ready for it. One knob was broken off and that didn't bother me since I knew that I wanted different knobs anyway. I decided on a nice bright white and after two coats of spray primer and one coat of white spray paint (all Valspar) this is how it came out...
I found cute little crystal knobs at Lowe's and had to tape off the fake keyhole before painting because it is glued on. I really love how it came out because the lines of it are so clean.

Now it is a great place for the girls to sit and read or draw and one day do homework.

In my quest to bring in some old antique type stuff to decorate their room, my grandmother gave me several antique frames. They were all dark brown and one of them was an easel style frame without any glass. So I spray painted it a light pink and made it into this...
I had one of my favorite pictures of the girls printed in 5x7 and adhered it to a piece of chipboard. I then strung some bakers twine onto it using these mini clothespins that I picked up at Michael's in the dollar bins. The girls love having this in their room now.

Previously Madison had Hannah Montana bedding and the matching lamp. Although it was cute, it just didn't go any more. They still needed a lamp but I wanted something a little more girly and yet not themed. I had this lamp in my office but never used it. It was dark brown until I spray painted it that same pink. Now they have a cute little shabby lamp for their desk!

To help the girls with their storage issues, we picked up two Billy bookcases from Ikea and put them on either side of the desk. Now they have a place for everything, even a place for their snow globe collection where their brothers can't reach them.
I'm still working on the decorative aspect of this room. These pictures need to get hung up, two of them are paintings that the girls did with noodles and string and pom poms. The other is a canvas that Madison painted last year. And now that turquoise chair has a place too!

Hope you enjoyed! And I will share more as I continue to add flair to this room. Come back tomorrow when I share a scrapbook sketch and the first of four different ways that I used it!

The Blue Chair

2011-05-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

My 6 week photography class is now over and although I am sad that I will no longer get assignments and be able to share my pictures with my classmates, I am excited about everything that I have learned. I have gone from taking mediocre pictures on semi-auto modes of my camera, to shooting fully in manual and knowing how and why I choose the settings that I do. One of the things that we learned towards the end of the class was about visually interesting photos and using props, namely chairs. I was so excited to go to the Salvation Army to look for a cheap wooden chair that I could paint a bright color and use in some fun shots. Here is what I found for only $7.00!
It was boring white and wood and was crying out for a really fun color. So I went to Lowe's and bought some Valspar spray paint in Mediterranean Blue. I am so in love with this chair! That night I went out with my girls and my friend Kristina and her daughter Kaydence. We went out into what looked like the middle of the desert and found this great bush with bright yellow flowers. This was the perfect spot and we chose to go out about an hour before sunset to get a nice warm glow. Here is my favorite shot of my friends' daughter...
Isn't she adorable?! She loved this hat that I brought and was being such an adorable little ham! I also got a few minutes to shoot pictures of my girls although it was cold and windy. Here is my little Kaley Bailey...
She couldn't even take her jacket off because it was too cold. And my beautiful way-too-grown-up Madison...
I was so pleased with how these pictures came out that I decided to take it out into our side yard and place against our wood fence in the shade. Then I convinced the boys that they wanted their picture taken and they went with it. First up is Zachary...
I love these striped shirts against the blue chair and wood fence! And then maybe the most priceless face that I have ever seen... my sweet Gabriel...
How can that not just melt your heart?! Well, needless to say I am now excited about finding more cool chairs to paint bright colors and use in new ways! So always be on the lookout for a good deal and a new way to use something old!

Disneyland

2011-05-17T08:24:00.000-07:00

We spent Friday and Saturday at the "Happiest Place on Earth" although we didn't quite leave so happy!... but that's a long story! We got to see the World of Color show for the first time and we absolutely loved it.
I had grand plans of taking the girls around a few parts of Disneyland and finding some great places to take pictures for my photography class assignment. There are lots of little spots in the park that you wouldn't even know were in Disneyland if you just saw the picture but they have lots of great texture and color. But the weekend did not go according to plan (does it ever?!) and I got only a few shots here and there and never even got over to Critter Country like I wanted. But here are the few shots that I got.
There was a 45 minute wait for Toy Story Mania and every time that we go it is well worth the wait. This has to be my favorite ride in all of Disneyland and California Adventure. This was also the first time that we have been to Disneyland with the boys and not taken the stroller. Now I made sure that we had it in the back of the car just in case but the boys did really well after all. While we were in line the boys sat on this little curb and so I decided to start shooting thinking maybe I would get a cute photo. I was quite surprised at just how photogenic Gabriel decided to be!
Zachary is never quite as cooperative as Gabriel but every once in a while I can get a cute one of him if I have a fast enough shutter speed!
I love how Gabriel was standing against this wall while Daddy was getting fast passes for Soarin' over California (which the boys got to go on for the first time and they loved it!). Can I just ask... when did he grow up?!
I had only a minute while the boys got their picture taken for their passes to take a quick photo of Kaley. I wanted to take the opportunity because these chairs were so cute and the seat was yellow. But then it turned out that you could barely see the yellow and the back of the chair blended in with the wall! Oh well, you can't win them all!
This is the kind of thing that I was looking for, you would never guess that this is even in Disneyland let alone right across from the Jungle Cruise in one of the busiest spots in the whole park! I was kind of mad because when we were about to get in line for the Jungle Cruise I looked over and saw this spot and loved that it was in the shade and was the perfect set up. By the time that we got off the ride, the sun was hitting it and was casting a big shadow right across where I wanted Madison to stand! So I had to adjust what I wanted and I still ended up with a cute picture. It just goes to show, take the picture when you see the opportunity and don't wait!
This is my favorite photo from the day! See how adorable Gabriel was being... I love that kid! And I love this blue shirt on him!

Lately...

2011-05-10T13:08:00.001-07:00

I know that I have been very MIA lately and there is no excuse for that but it truly has been a crazy few weeks and I haven't had much to post about! My photography class has kept me quite busy and I love how much better my photos are getting. So let me fill you in on what has been going on lately...
My kids patiently waited for Daddy and Pop Pop to build their new swing set that they got as an Easter present. I just love how they turned the chairs around to sit and watch, and of course they kept asking, "Are they done yet?!"
And finally they were done and it was time to play! And they have played out there almost every day ever since!

My photography class gave me an excuse to spend an afternoon with these two awesome girls and do a best friend/ graduation photo shoot. We had so much fun and drove all over Victorville and Apple Valley but we got some great shots!
I am also learning to take better pictures of my kids inside my house. Every week I learn more and am able to put another piece of the puzzle together. I have big plans for this weekend's assignments! This is my Gabriel and I just took this picture this morning while in the girls' room taking pictures of Madison's American Girl doll as an example of front lighting. Oh yeah, we are also re doing the girls' room but I'm not done yet so I have nothing to show you yet! :(

We also celebrated my husband's birthday by having some friends over for burgers and I got a custom frozen custard cake from Freddy's. Boy, was it yummy too! Lesson learned while trying to take photos of my husband and his cake at 8:30 at night inside... use the external flash that I have! Duh!
My amazing husband bought me one of these for Mother's Day! He is so amazing and I love it so much that I almost don't mind talking on the phone! He did this only hours after I got into an accident with our van. It truly has been a roller coaster of a couple of weeks!

I have a post planned where I show you one scrapbook sketch and 4 different ways that I use it. But I am only halfway done with the layouts so I need to get busy!

Spring Brunch Centerpieces

2011-04-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

I recently had a spring brunch with some family and I decided to take that opportunity to try something that I had been wanting to do for quite some time. These fabric lollipops are what started this whole hair applique business and they turned out to be such a cute centerpiece for the tables. I knew that we were going to use a large dining table so I made the main centerpiece very long.
This planter box I bought at Target and it was I think brown to start off but then I spray painted it with my good ole Heirloom White spray paint and then put floral foam in the bottom. I made the fabric lollipops with t-shirt fabric that I bought at Joann's. The pink and blue I bought by the yard, the green I bought a $2.25 t-shirt and then just cut strips out of it. The yellow is actually white fabric that I bought by the yard and then spritzed with Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist in Lemon Zest. I hot glued the strips while twisting them onto circles of cardstock. I had to make two for each lollipop because I then sandwiched them together with hot glue and the dowel in the middle. I tied a ribbon onto them and tah dah!
I covered the floral foam with green rafia grass (which was perfect being just before Easter!) The banner is made of little rectangles that I cut from patterned scrapbook paper and then I ran them through my sewing machine with a straight stitch and adhered them with glue dots and ribbon bows. This was how I displayed our dessert also... cake pops! Yummy! You can tell that the bottom picture was after we had devoured about half of them!

This is the smaller version that I made for the kids' table. Just like the big one but with fewer lollipops (and cake pops!) I only attached a ribbon bow to this one. The planter is also from Target and I didn't have to spray paint this one because it was already this great purple color!

Did you make any fun centerpieces for Spring this year? Or have you ever combined a centerpiece with showcasing dessert before?

My New Adventure

2011-04-27T17:31:00.000-07:00

With 4 kids, a wonderful husband, housework, friends, family, scrapbooking, my photography class, and church commitments, do I really need another adventure?.... well, of course I do! I rarely get pictures of myself but if you look at this one you will see the evidence of my newest creations...

I recently have been searching for cute headbands with fabric flowers on them that cost less than an arm and a leg. But my biggest problem is that headbands give me a headache, so when I find one that is comfortable I am in heaven. But what happens when my basic headband isn't enough? Well I created a little something to add some personality.
I have one basic black plastic headband that I like to wear and is comfortable and I did find some elastic headbands I think by Goody that I like. I needed to create these appliques to be versatile to work on either headband so this is what I did...
I am hand sewing snaps onto the felt strips so that I can attach them onto elastic headbands too! I create the base out of felt because not only is it strong but it's soft against your head. The single flowers and even a few of the smaller two flower appliques can be put on with those metal bendy clips. I wore this one on Easter...
It was really cute and went perfectly with my dress. Oh yeah, and by the way, isn't my hubby handsome?! I just had to get that out there in cyberspace. :)

Once my friend saw what I was making she convinced me that I needed to open an etsy shop... so I did! I opened yesterday and I'm really excited. I'm just starting out so I will be adding lots more designs and colors over the next few weeks so keep checking it out! See Simply Harris here

Boys' 3rd Birthday

2011-04-13T10:57:00.001-07:00

Here is the story: a couple of months ago when I was working on birthday layouts for the kids, the only one that I had left was for the boys. So I got out the pictures and the products that I wanted to use and decided to think about what I wanted to do overnight and tackle it the next day. Well, at some point in that next 24 hours my 3 year old twin boys got into my scrap room and saw pictures of themselves and decided to take them... and hide them! When I discovered that some of them were gone I tried to get them to find the pictures for me. No such luck. I decided to wait for a while to see if they would show up and a couple of them magically appeared on our stairs one day. But most of the pictures of Zach were still gone. I waited and waited and waited... got other projects done just knowing that they would turn up. I cleaned their room and everything. Still nothing, so I decided to just reprint the missing pictures and move on with my life.
All of that drama to say that I finally finished their birthday layout! I think that I have said it before but I will say it again in case anyone who reads this has twins. I create 2 page layouts of big events for my boys and each page has pictures of one child on it. I also include at least one of both of them plus any detail shots and I always try to have journaling specific to each child and some sort of title. This doesn't always work with my design but it is nice to have in case some day they (or their wives) want to split up the pages. They go together for now but can easily be split for each of them. Every once in a while I do a page about the two of them but they will just have to share or fight over those.
Here it is. I used SEI Happy Day and I think that it went very well with the boy theme with just a touch of pink that you can't really notice.
Zach's page has a semi title, I just used this super cute happy birthday tag and the 3 is a grungeboard piece that I colored with SEI chalk ink in ivy. It works so well on the grungeboard and I love the way that it came out. I did my favorite new thing which is drawing lines around the outside of my photos to make them standout without having to mat each one. I used the Sharpie poster paint pen in white.
Gabriel's page has this cute little cupcake on it from SEI and the border punch is from Fiskars. I used my wonderful EK success scalloped circle punch for the journaling blocks.
Here is a closeup of the 3.

I'm just so happy that it is done and now I can move on to Halloween and other Fall stuff and not be worrying about where those pictures are. I'm sure that now that I have finished this page I will find them!

Slice Elite and Zootopia

2011-04-07T09:13:00.000-07:00

I have been working on a gift album for a friend lately and have finally finished it! I can't wait to give it to her this Sunday. The album is of her grandson and he is adorable. I can't show you actual pages from the album because it's not mine to share but I did want to share some of the cute little designs that I cut using my Slice Elite and the Zoo-topia design card.
There are even some words included on this design card and I am so in love with the shadow feature! It just adds so much to the designs.

Here is the little frog that I cut and I am loving the layering feature. I normally wouldn't have used the polka dot paper but I was trying to tie in the papers from the album. I adhered him with dimensional adhesive too.
I love clouds on layouts and these clouds are so easy to do because you can quickly change the size and it even has a layering feature for them but I just wanted basic white fluffy clouds. I used dimensional adhesive for the little ones to define them a little more from the big one.

I have to tell you how much I am in love with this tree! It was so easy to do and I even used this wood grain paper from AC. I used the same polka dot paper that I did with the frog to tie it in once again. Please excuse my horrible zig zag stitching here... sometimes my sewing machine does this and I don't know why. The back always looks perfect so it must be something with the tension in the top thread? I have no idea what I'm talking about!
Here is my absolute favorite! This sweet little boy was a lion for Halloween last year so this was perfect for the page. I cut his face out of kraft paper and I some how got a smudge of sharpie on his face from when I colored his nose ( I didn't want to have to cut the face again in black just to get his nose) so I re-cut his face in the kraft and then adhered it with foam adhesive so now he is dimensional and I like it even more! I love how fixing little mistakes can make things even better. As the saying goes...
"There are no mistakes, only the opportunity to embellish!"

You & Me

2011-04-06T10:09:00.000-07:00

One day last week when I got about an hour or so in my room I wanted to create something. But I didn't want to jump into Halloween yet and the other two pages that I need to finish I was waiting for pictures to be printed at Costco. What I really wanted was to work with specific products that I hadn't had a chance to work with yet, namely, Echo Park's Little Girl collection. So for this page I started with products and then searched for pictures. What I found in my little power sort box of photos waiting to be used was some random pictures of Kaley & I that have just never found a home.... well, there was my inspiration! Here is my 12x12 layout that I created for her...
Each sheet of Echo Park paper is so cute on both sides and I don't have the extra money to buy two of every pack just so that I have two of every sheet so I have to be creative in how I use their papers and stretch them out as far as possible. Which is where this idea comes from: I took one sheet of patterned paper and cut out a 10 1/2 inch square out of the center using my trimmer, I then adhered an 11x11 inch sheet of white cardstock onto the top of that. Then I stitched around it twice, once pretty straight (as straight as I can stitch!) and then once very wavy.

That 10 1/2 inch square that I cut out of the base paper? I flipped it over and adhered it to the center of the white cardstock! One sheet of paper but used in two different ways and giving me lots of color and layers. Here is a view of the back of my paper.
Once I cropped and lined up my three pictures I knew that I wanted to title to be in that empty square so I cut some paper out just big enough to cover my Tim Holtz Alterations label die and ran it through my Sizzix. But I found that just the label wasn't enough to really fill that space. What did I do? I used the negative space that I just cut out and flipped it over! It looks like two sheets of paper but really it's one. Here is a close-up.
I stitched around it as best I could (it was not easy!) and then added one of their cute little journaling cards that is on one side of their paper and then added some letter stickers that come in the pack and I stamped the ampersand symbol.
This little cluster consists of the i love you sticker from the collection pack and the little heart I got at Michael's in the dollar section. It was attached to little clothespins but it seemed just too bulky so I took it off and just added the heart.

I journaled around the outside and voila! A pretty cute page using very little of my precious Echo Park paper.

Bedroom Corner

2011-03-30T09:26:00.000-07:00

There is a corner in our bedroom that is kind of behind the door where I knew I wanted to put this little setup. These 8x8 frames are from Creative Memories and I got them before I stopped selling it years ago. They are magnetic and so they are very easy to change out the layouts and I don't have any glass to deal with. I have two 12x12 versions downstairs also.
Here is a close up of the four frames. Obviously I have one for each child and I try to change out the layouts every season. They then go into 8x8 albums that I have for each of the kids. Instant albums... I love it! The only thing I wish is that the ribbon wasn't there going across them. They come with little black clothespins so that you can clip things onto it but it just seems to be in my way. I haven't yet figured out how to take them off without ruining the frames. The black circles in each corner are the magnets that hold the layout in place.
I always do the layouts with one 4x6 picture and I always put their names on it. These layouts have been up for quite a while but the colors went so well in our room that I have left them up.
This little antique sewing machine table sits under it. It is something that has been in my family for a long time and I love that I own it now. On top is a beautiful doily, a vase that my grandmother gave me (that I finally bought flowers for) it's from Thailand, and the glass lotion bottle that was my great grandmother's complete with her lotion still in it, and a little glass dish that was hers also. It has been almost 10 years since she passed away and I like having these little pieces of her surrounding me.
This is the opposite corner of the entry into the bathroom. The only reason why I show this to you is because that framed picture of my husband and I used to be in between the four magnetic frames at our old house. It didn't fit in this house so I split them up. The picture we took using a tripod and remote and then I did some fancy stuff in Photoshop Elements to it and printed it at Costco. Now it sits here in our little workout corner. I have just recently started back on the elliptical after 2 months off (shame on me!).

I love creating scrapbook layouts but often times they go directly into albums and I don't get to enjoy them much. It is nice to have places like this that I can rotate my creations and get to see them before they get put away. The bigger ones downstairs are more for seasonal pages like at Christmas I put up last year's Christmas morning layout, and St. Patrick's Day I put up the girls' clover artwork. The clipboards that are in my office are for current 12x12 pages that I complete and want to enjoy. You can see that here
I hope to get into my room today and create something, as much as Spring Cleaning makes me feel good creating something for just a little while will make me feel better!

So Excited!!!

2011-03-29T07:54:00.000-07:00

I am so excited to share with you my next little adventure... I am officially enrolled in Maggie Holmes Beginner/Intermediate Photography Class! I normally shoot in Sports mode because I find that it gives me the best color without the flash and yet still has a fast shutter speed so only half of my pictures are of blurry moving children. But I will learn, in this 6 week class, how to shoot and be comfortable shooting in Manual. I am very excited to no longer have dark and flat pictures and I will be soaking up all of the information that I can from this class!
These are just some bits and pieces of Maggie's photos that I love! She finds the most colorful and texturally interesting places to shoot and I am currently on the lookout for great places and great props to use during my class...
And in order to be a better (or shall I say... better looking) photographer I ordered something that I have been wanting for quite a while now. This came last week...
My very own Jo Tote! If you have never heard of this before they are beautiful camera bags that are roomy enough for me to fit my purse stuff too. So I can basically take my good Canon with me all the time and look good doing it! The inside is customizable with velcro inserts and it is black and white damask, which I am so in love with right now! Here is my new bag in sugarplum...
I think that I am ready for my new class which starts in less than two weeks now. I am already figuring out places that I want to go and people that I want to shoot... I can't wait!

Spring is Here!

2011-03-28T11:19:00.001-07:00

Here in the High Desert spring has been teasing us. One day it is beautiful and the sun is shining and then last week it was snowing! But I have decided to make spring stay put for awhile at least inside my house so I have been very busy getting my craftiness on!
Friday night my friend Kristina and I got together and made these moss covered letters. We each did the first letter of our last name, it was incredibly messy but I love how it turned out! Now I want to find a bigger ampersand and do the same thing. This is now sitting up on the top shelf of our chunky shelves in the dining room.
This is my take on Becky Higgins topiary found here I couldn't find enough of the right flowers (nor could I afford that many!) to cover a whole Styrofoam ball, so while I was at Tai Pan last week I picked up this green ball for like $4.00. I had this buttery yellow vase sitting around that I bought at Marshalls for $6.99. I did just like Becky's tutorial: filled the pot with floral foam stuck a spray painted dowel into the ball and the foam and then covered the foam with moss (leftover from the letter project) and added a couple of pears! So easy!
I did just like I said I was going to and spray painted this wreath stand Heirloom white and then distressed it. I love how it now pops against the buffet and the wall. The Easter Egg wreath tutorial is from the last post found here .
I have added to my apothecary jar collection and filled these ones with various fake fruit. I love the colors (especially the lemons with the raspberries and blackberries). Ok and I held my camera up to take this picture because I'm not that tall and I just realized that there is a Nerf gun dart up there! Didn't know that!... I guess that is life with little boys.
I also created this over the weekend. Now this one is also from Becky Higgins and I followed it as closely as I could. You can find it here I just loved the colors of it. The candle stick I got at Home Goods and spray painted it Sun Yellow from Rust0leum.
I also added a few pretty flowers to our bedroom. I will be sharing more about this little corner in a couple of days. I love the yellow against the blue!
I got really spray paint happy this weekend apparently! This little pot I have had for so long I can't even remember where I got it. It used to be olive green and went very well with my "Tuscan Dungeon" decor that I used to have. But now it is Sun Yellow and slightly distressed then filled with a mixture of pretty pink flowers and some foam fruit (yes, I had that much fake fruit thanks to my friend!) that I stuck wooden skewers into to add into the arrangement. The grapes I just tucked into the vase. This now sits in my laundry room and makes it a little more cheery! Couldn't we all use a little more cheeriness when doing laundry?

Easter Wreath Revamp

2011-03-24T08:50:00.000-07:00

As I was perusing the dollar section of Target I found this cute little egg wreath for only $2.50. I thought that it was perfect for my house but a little plain. I wasn't crazy about seeing the seams on the eggs and how all of the eggs were the same finish, aren't Easter eggs supposed to be like snowflakes... no two are ever the same (at least when my girls decorate them!) So I brought this home and used supplies from my stash to make it unique.

I used these Queen & Co. adhesive rhinestones in the same turquoise color to make stripes across the eggs.

I used Distress Stickles to create little polka dots on the pink eggs.
And Distress Crackle paint in Mustard Seed for the yellow eggs. I didn't worry about covering the whole eggs just the front and a little of the sides.
I also painted some green acrylic paint on the green ones and then sprinkled a little Martha Stewart glitter on them while the paint was wet. And I covered the surrounding eggs while I sprayed some Tattered Angels glimmer mist in purple on the purple eggs, they looked dyed and I love it!

So here is my one of a kind wreath that only cost me $2.50 and it goes perfectly on my new wreath stand that I picked up on clearance at Michael's, although I want to spray paint it Heirloom white and then distress it a little. Happy Spring... even though it was snowing here last night!

DIY Chunky Shelves

2011-03-23T16:58:00.000-07:00

I saw these really incredible shelves on the House of Smith's blog a while back and have been wanting to re-create them in our dining room. I knew that the perfect place was above that buffet but it took us a little while to get to that point. Now that the wall is painted and the buffet is done we (mostly Neil) got the shelves done too! This is what the House of Smith's looked like...
Aren't they amazing?! And the full tutorial is here, Neil built them and then I filled in the holes with the wood filler and painted them and then he hung them... a true team effort! So these are ours...
I'm still working on actually decorating them since I have never had so many places to put decorations before, especially Spring/Easter decorations! I just took a trip to Tai Pan and Home Goods, plus raided the dollar section at Target so I'm getting there!
For right now this is my set up. The wreath on that new wreath stand I will be sharing more about tomorrow. I can't wait to craft and pillage some more fun vintage-y finds to put on these shelves for oh so many different occasions.
So here is where this wall goes right into the kitchen (please don't look too closely!). I would like to get a new dining table set at some point as soon as I think our kids can handle it. They are almost there.

Forever

2011-03-21T10:07:00.000-07:00

I have been so busy around here doing the home improvement type stuff and just trying to keep up on housework that I haven't been able to get into my room for quite some time. But last Friday I got a little bit of time and then I got a few more minutes Sunday morning to finish this page up. I had this picture left over from last year sitting in my little photo box and these papers from American Crafts that I hardly even got to touch around Valentine's Day. So I decided to use them and create just a little something.
I am learning to create more clusters on my pages to ground the elements and I have had a lot of fun experimenting with it. I love these label stickers and the pearls are something that I try to stock up on at the expos. I'm also trying to use my stamps a lot more!
This is a stamp that I picked up on clearance at Michael's around Valentine's Day. No one was buying it because someone had stamped it onto a red ink pad and then left it! But it was nothing that a little stamp cleaner couldn't fix. You will notice that I am an idiot and stamped this image not only crooked but upside down as well! I just decided to go with it, I guess it adds to the charm of the page right? I got to use my new tiny stapler and then I added one of my new favorite things this rose brad from AC. A little button and a pearl and it creates another cluster.
I am loving the banner trend right now and decided to use some scraps from the AC papers. The background paper is this amazing pink ledger paper from SEI. I had to pick up a bunch of it when I was working in the booth. The banner I just threw together using different sizes of triangles. They are not perfect and I like the fact that they are not uniform. I then sewed a straight stitch across them. And it's a perfect place for the title (gotta love my Thickers!)
One of my favorite pieces from this line are the details flowers. I am being very selective as to how I use them because I don't want them to ever run out, and there are only four! This was a really simple way to ground the photo to the page using a strip of patterned paper and matting the photo with a solid color, then I added the little strip with a decorative edge and stitched a zig zag on it to tie them together. So easy!

Irishly Blessed

2011-03-17T19:11:00.000-07:00

We have had a great day here for St. Patrick's Day. We have carried on many traditions while others didn't quite fit in this year, but hey, there is always tomorrow (it can be a two day celebration right?). The girls have been out half day all week and so it has thrown my schedule for a complete loop. But here is what we have done so far...
Everybody is wearing green although I think that there has been some pinching going on anyway!
The girls got new headbands this year, Madison is wearing one that she got at school and she got a hand stamp of a shamrock.
The few decorations and handmade things from the girls that I have are out (I'm hoping to clean up the clearance section at Target and Michael's tomorrow!) And "The Night Before St. Patrick's Day" was read yesterday as well as read in Kaley's class by her teacher.
We have had lots of playing around too.
Neil made dinner. Now I know what you are thinking, "what are you wierdos eating?!" This year we had fettuccine alfredo with chicken. The noodles were dyed green as well as the alfredo sauce, and then salad with green ranch dressing. I guess that it's a good thing that the chicken and the cheese were not green... that would have been just plain yucky! It might seem odd that we have Italian food on an Irish holiday but that is because it is more kid-friendly. Next year Neil promises that we can have something Irish, and the kids will just have to deal with it, although he hates Corned Beef and Cabbage.
I even got a few shots of all four kids together which is an amazing victory. I don't have any of Neil and I yet but the day isn't over. We still haven't had dessert yet and I am hoping to make my sweet shamrock treats for the girls tomorrow after school since I ran out of time today.
We also continued our tradition of watching Veggie Tales "Sumo of the Opera". Why?... you ask.... because there is a segment in there that is a flannelgraph of the story of St. Patrick and his journey through life in which he trusted in God and brought Christianity to the country of Ireland. We try to remind the kids that today is not just about wearing green, or pinching, or leprachauns and gold, but about having the courage to tell others about God and trusting that he will take care of us no matter where we are or what we are going through.

And I am almost done with a scrapbook page! Can't wait to finish it and share!